Ada Everleigh, professional name of Ada Simms Lester (21 February 1864–3 January 1960), entrepreneur, was born in Greene County, and was the daughter of George Warren Montgomery Simms and Virginia Madison Simms Simms. She and her younger sister, Minna, later provided varying accounts of their lives, including place of birth, age, and names to protect their family. For this reason, some details about their lives remain inconclusive. In 1880 the family was living in Madison County before Ada Simms and her sister moved to Warrensburg, Missouri. They may have attended private schools where they learned dancing and elocution. Reportedly, they married brothers with the surname Lester, both marriages ending within a year. The sisters may then have traveled with a theatrical troupe or even become prostitutes.
In 1890 they lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and in 1898, with $35,000 they had inherited or earned, the sisters acquired and remodeled an old house, which they operated as a bordello during the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition held in the city that year. They used the surname Everly, which they attributed to letters from their grandmother signed, "Everly Yours." When the Exposition left, their business left with it, but by then the sisters had made $70,000.
On the recommendation of a Washington, D.C., madam the sisters moved to Chicago and purchased the building at 2131-2133 South Dearborn Street for $55,000 from a woman who had operated a bordello there. At that time they modified their alias to Everleigh and opened the Everleigh Club at 8:00 P.M. on 1 February 1900. The sisters hired African American servants and lavishly furnished the club, even serving champagne rather than beer. Minna Lester was the club's public spokeswoman, while Ada Lester (who sometimes spelled her first name Aida) was responsible for recruiting and interviewing applicants and for keeping the accounts. The women she hired wore evening gowns and jewelry and received lessons in etiquette, dance, and literature, among other topics. Ada Lester was later described as "one of the most notorious madams of all time" and she and her sister as "soft spoken, cultured southern belles."
During the first decade of the twentieth century the Everleigh sisters ran one of the most famous, or notorious, bordellos in the world. Because of the lavishness of the club and the entertainment provided for its elite clientele, the Everleigh Club was not only profitable but reportedly also the best place in the city for a prostitute to work. To maintain the health of the club's prostitutes, the sisters hired a doctor to perform regular examinations. These health precautions benefited the women and the club by helping maintain its reputation as well as the health of the clientele who frequented it. The sisters boasted that the butterflies—as they called them—ate healthful and complete meals, wore fine clothing, and received some education. The select and wealthy clients in many cases spent the evening being entertained with conversation, music, and dancing for a $50 fee upon entering the club, and had to pay extra to join one of the young women upstairs.
In 1911 the reforming mayor of Chicago ordered the Everleigh Club closed and the building was razed in 1933. The sisters traveled to Europe and later settled in New York, where they resumed the use of their Lester surnames. They started the Lester Poetry Circle and participated in women's clubs. The sisters befriended journalist Charles Washburn, who wrote a book in the 1930s about them and their Chicago club without revealing their identities. Minna Simms Lester died in New York on 16 September 1948, after which Ada Simms Lester returned to Virginia and lived quietly with relatives in Charlottesville. With Ada Lester's approval, Washburn disclosed the identities of the Everleigh sisters in 1953. Ada Simms Lester, also known as Ada Everleigh, suffered a stroke and died at her Charlottesville home on 3 January 1960. After a private funeral, she was buried next to her sister in the cemetery of Saint Paul's Episcopal Church, in Alexandria, where the gravestone inscription reads, "Aida Lester Simms, 1864–1960."
Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Charles Washburn, Come into My Parlor: A Biography of the Aristocratic Everleigh Sisters of Chicago (1934), with name and place of birth concealed, Washburn, "Everleigh Sisters?" Chicago Daily Tribune, 1 Nov. 1953 (disclosing names and with portraits of both sisters), and Karen Abbott, Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul (2007); Birth Register, Greene Co., Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; passport application using the name Aida R. Lester, 29 June 1909, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; Chicago Daily Tribune, 19, 26 Jan., 2 Feb. 1936; Death Certificate, Charlottesville, Virginia Department of Health; obituaries in Charlottesville Daily Progress, 4 Jan. 1960, Chicago Daily Tribune (quotations), New York Times, and Washington Post, all 6 Jan. 1960.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Leah M. Thomas.
How to cite this page:
Leah M. Thomas,"Ada Everleigh (1864–1960)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2015 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Everleigh_Ada, accessed [today's date]).
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